Papa: thanks for taking me in when life got too "complicated" for mom and dad. Thanks for making me stilts and teaching me how to float, swim and swing an axe. (I'm still the best at the first one.) I miss you.

Just told my Dad on the phone. Glad he's still here so I could. We disagree on a great many things (religion, politics), but I never doubted for one second that he had my back. Good dude and I'm lucky to have him.

Nothing. I'm entirely indifferent to his existence, and see him as little more than the wife/child abusing asshole he was.

/dear dad, I wish i was writing this card to the turkey baster, instead//get hallmark on that, i bet i could make money/to everyone who has, or is a good father, this is your day. enjoy it. i've spent today watching my brother and my niece together, and for the first time in my life this day has a meaning, even if it's not my own.

I'd tell him not to worry about being unemployed and to go get his heart checked out. I'd tell him I would find a way to cover his health care bills and not to argue with me about it because i'd rather be broke and have him around to spoil his granddaughter than to have to bury him five months before she was born and only be able to show her pictures and tell her stories about him.

Why did you think that it was OK to steal the money in your kid's savings accounts when you divorced mom?Why did you think that it was OK to take the family burial plots (illegally) and have them switched over to you and your new wife and her kids? (I had them switched back after you died when I informed the cemetery what you did....40 years later). What man steals his kid's burial plots for crying out loud?What made you say that a woman, and mother, could not make it in the drafting business? (I have been doing it for 42 years now).Why the heck did you try to get that dentist to fix my teeth (who had an office in a third floor walk up downtown and "made" all his own equipment) when you had a real dentist fix your new wife's kid's teeth?Thanks for not paying for my college, my car and my clothes but paying for your step kids college, cars and clothes.Thanks for leaving us in the middle of winter with no heat in the house and no food in the refrigerator. It was great getting dressed in front of an open electric oven in the morning. The refrigerator died the next week and it was so cold that we just left the food on the sink in the kitchen.

Thanks for teaching me how to raise my own kids the right way. It was easy. I just did the opposite of whatever you did.

You are no father to me. I look like you, which proves conclusively that I share some of your genetics, but that's where the relationship ends. You killed my mother. From the time I was 5 until I was 9, you used me for your realdoll when you didn't have a girlfriend. You let your new wife beat me daily, berate me, lock me in a bedroom and starve me. You finally abandoned me - you just left me sitting there, alone, waiting for someone to pick me up. Then you dumped me with the mother who had abused you. You made no attempt to check on me. You did nothing to contribute to my upbringing. Later, after I found you again, you made a big show of being a part of the family again - to the point of promising to pay for college if I just got the loan to save time. And then you abandoned me again. You weren't at my high school graduation, college graduation, graduate school graduation... no one was. When I asked for your help, you blew me off. When I needed a father, you didn't give a shiat. I just now paid off the student loans. And yet you paid for your other kids' college, cars, first house downpayments...

A couple weeks ago, you remembered my birthday for the first time in my life. Now, it seems, you want a daughter. If I thought you were sincere, that you actually cared, that you were truly sorry, I would forgive you. But there's a difference between being forgiving and being a farking doormat. You've done this too many times for me to believe you now. I know who you are. I don't want you to call me, I don't want you to visit me. If I'm in Atlanta on other business and you happen to see me, I don't want you to approach me. I feel absolutely no responsibility toward you in your old age. I hope you die alone and afraid, warehoused and abandoned. Then maybe you'll understand what you put me through.

Benevolent Misanthrope:You are no father to me. I look like you, which proves conclusively that I share some of your genetics, but that's where the relationship ends. You killed my mother. From the time I was 5 until I was 9, you used me for your realdoll when you didn't have a girlfriend. You let your new wife beat me daily, berate me, lock me in a bedroom and starve me. You finally abandoned me - you just left me sitting there, alone, waiting for someone to pick me up. Then you dumped me with the mother who had abused you. You made no attempt to check on me. You did nothing to contribute to my upbringing. Later, after I found you again, you made a big show of being a part of the family again - to the point of promising to pay for college if I just got the loan to save time. And then you abandoned me again. You weren't at my high school graduation, college graduation, graduate school graduation... no one was. When I asked for your help, you blew me off. When I needed a father, you didn't give a shiat. I just now paid off the student loans. And yet you paid for your other kids' college, cars, first house downpayments...

A couple weeks ago, you remembered my birthday for the first time in my life. Now, it seems, you want a daughter. If I thought you were sincere, that you actually cared, that you were truly sorry, I would forgive you. But there's a difference between being forgiving and being a farking doormat. You've done this too many times for me to believe you now. I know who you are. I don't want you to call me, I don't want you to visit me. If I'm in Atlanta on other business and you happen to see me, I don't want you to approach me. I feel absolutely no responsibility toward you in your old age. I hope you die alone and afraid, warehoused and abandoned. Then maybe you'll understand what you put me through.

Damn.Glad you can get that out and move on.Truly.He deserves to die slowly, alone and in excruciating, agonizing pain.

"how many times do I have to tell you, I have what is called 'voice mail', it's not an answering machine. I can't hear you when you call and yell into the phone 'Joey! Joey!, it's your dad, pick-up the phone, Joey!"

I don't want you to have another heart attack.12 years of abstinence is long enough.You've proved your point.You're actually pretty fun when your drunk.I'd rather have you alive.Please give up your AA addiction and stay alive.Join FARK instead.We need you.

You weren't perfect. And there was pain. In the first years after you drank yourself to death it was difficult to think of you without anger & pain.

But the other day, my tomato plant died. And I remembered what it was like to be able to call you and ask you about flowers, and the yard ... or how to put up dry wall.

I miss fishing with you. I miss that you always caught the most fish. I miss the smile on your face (or was it a smirk?) when we'd both empty our bags and you'd have the biggest, most beautiful rainbow trout and I had a brookie. I miss that you knew the mountains like the back of your hand.

As the years pass since you died -- I think of you less often, but with more love. I am sure it wasn't easy -- and maybe you shouldn't have ever been a father. But I know you loved me in your own way... as much as you could. I wish I could hug you and tell you that I love everything about you and that I'm not ashamed of you. That I am proud of you. And most of all... I wish I could hear you say you're proud of the woman I've become. I miss you.

So many people have so much anger for their fathers... when they are gone, they are gone. There are no more chances to say the things we want to or need to. There has not been one day that I wished I could go back in time and say all the hateful things that I carried in my heart & soul because of things my father did or didn't do for me --- but I can't count how many times I wish I had a time machine to go back and tell him that I loved him.

I'd say I love you, but you're an asshole. If it wasn't for wanting to see your granddaughter you wouldn't give me the time of day when we weren't at work, since your new wife and new kids are so much better than your old ones.

And as for work, I still appreciate your sabotaging my other job opportunities to force me to work with you. I just love working harder than anyone else only to hear "you're just here because of your dad, so you're not getting a raise"